The Caelum-Daeli war having ended years ago, control over the continent has fragmented into a large collection of independent states. With the fall of the Daeli and a critical blow to the Second of Caelum, the technological surge started by the Third of Caelum continues with even greater momentum.

Mages are uncommon on this continent. What this continent does have a lot of is technology - fossil fuel engines, machineguns, and electric appliances.

You are Raphael "Ralph" Mebbit, a fresh graduate with a degree in... Archaeology? Good luck getting a job.

Your specialty is Alchemy, an ancient form of magic that was erased from the pages of history by the Daeli Empire. With the Daeli more or less gone, bits and pieces of Alchemy have been revealed in the rare preserved scrap of paper, scrawling on stone, or the extremely rare book. The concept is simple - form a Gate, send physical matter through the gate and into the Alternate, use the rules of the Alternate to modify the matter, and bring it back through the gate into the physical world, resulting in a new substance.

You uh, can't actually perform alchemy (yet!), but it's your goal to seek out knowledge of the lost art and utilize it for the betterment of the world.

Your ultimate goal is finding the Silver Tablet, a legendary book containing all of the known transmutation rules that was transmuted into a metal tablet and hidden away from the Daeli. The rules to transmute the tablet back into a book are said to be carved onto its front surface.

Very loose rules. Barely any rules, really. Everyone is free to post what they want Ralph to do, hopefully in some direction towards advancing the plot.

Adaptability - How well you can learn new material or MacGyver together a contraption.LOW (You can MacGyver a piece of paper into a paper plane that sorta flies)

The surrounding area:

Current Location: Darson

Last edited by CaveCricket48 on Tue Mar 13, 2018 3:21 am, edited 19 times in total.

Thu Oct 13, 2016 3:05 am

CaveCricket48

Joined: Tue Jun 12, 2007 11:52 pmPosts: 9827Location: Here

Re: World Reader

You open your eyes. The morning light spills through your window, illuminating all of the posters and drawings on your wall of armor, weapons, and various artifacts and doodads.

Your only job at the moment is providing references and historically accurate information for a role-playing board-game company, which makes barely enough to keep your house running and give two meals a day - occasionally you'll splurge and have a third. You're only needed when they send you a letter or have someone visit you, since you can't exactly afford a telephone yet.

What a life.

Well, might as well check the mail and then look through some old books you pulled out of an abandoned house's basement.

> Might as well do those, in that order. Maybe some far off relative died and left you a fortune!

Thu Oct 13, 2016 3:21 am

CaveCricket48

Joined: Tue Jun 12, 2007 11:52 pmPosts: 9827Location: Here

Re: World Reader

TorrentHKU wrote:

> Might as well do those, in that order. Maybe some far off relative died and left you a fortune!

Sounds like an easy way to start the morning. Hopping out of bed, you leave your room, down a short hallway, through the living room, and to the front door.

It's a single-floor house with two bedrooms, a kitchen, living room, and bathroom. You live alone, so it's plenty big enough for now.

Stepping out of the house, the chilly morning air bites the skin of your unclothed torso. Wearing a shirt to bed is way too warm, and air conditioning jacks up your energy bill.

A newspaper is on the doorstep, and a few envelopes and ads are in the mailbox.

Advertisement from the board-game company you work for, another for the local grocery store saying they're now stocked with (expensive) Eitulta lamps imported from the other side of the world.

Letter from the bank probably saying that your college loan needs repaying soon...

And a letter from some unknown company or whatever, doesn't say much on the surface.

The newspaper is a lot more interesting - another town far to the south wiped out by witches. An artist's depiction of something resembling a giant monstrous dove spewing beams of fire is plastered on the front page.

BACK INTO THE HOUSE!

The mail gets dropped off on the living room's coffee table and you check out the new books sitting on the same table.

Four books total - a diary, a holy text for the First of Caelum, a rare collection of children's fairly tales, and an unknown book written in an unknown language.

> Open unknown letter. Maybe a relative died and left us some money or something. Hope for the best.

Thu Oct 13, 2016 3:41 am

CaveCricket48

Joined: Tue Jun 12, 2007 11:52 pmPosts: 9827Location: Here

Re: World Reader

CrazyMLC wrote:

> Open unknown letter. Maybe a relative died and left us some money or something. Hope for the best.

You open the unknown letter using a letter-opener shaped like the legendary sword Lucida.

Hmm. Looks like it's from a research company called Universal Computations. You've heard of them a few times in school, they made the room-sized electric computer that your campus uses for math and science crap.

It's... An interview request? Apparently they're attracted to your Archaeology degree. Odd that a tech company would be concerning itself with dead bits of history.

> An interview request! Oh boy. Do any of the children's stories cover how to handle interviews?

Thu Oct 13, 2016 3:57 am

CaveCricket48

Joined: Tue Jun 12, 2007 11:52 pmPosts: 9827Location: Here

Re: World Reader

CrazyMLC wrote:

> An interview request! Oh boy. Do any of the children's stories cover how to handle interviews?

Let's find out!

You skim through the book to see what stories might give you a hand.

Some child prince that fled his kingdom as his brother took over. Learned how to be a crazy good swordsman, chased down a thief that stole his favourite sword, and ended up returning to his kingdom and taking it back.

A land where there was a special language that whatever you wrote, it magically happened. The God that created the language (and also the one that made it work) had vanished, and the people had to relearn how to do mundane tasks that they now had to do, like properly getting dressed or opening doors.

A girl discovered that she had the power to create light, and she uses it to peacefully resolve conflicts by (temporarily) blinding armies, warding off beasts, and providing beacons for sailors. She sets up mirrors across the land so her powers can reach others, and spends many years simply creating light. When she eventually dies from exhaustion, trade routes become unusable, the countless ships that now sail the seas are lost, people walk around at night without a sense of danger and fall prey to beasts.

A mage has the power to change materials into something else, like a rock into a bird, or a feather into a blade. He performs many experiments on objects, and then living things, recording all of his findings into a book. When his book is complete, all of the life around him is gone, replaced with mindless beasts or inanimate objects.

A mage discovers that he has the power to disable a person's protective field, allowing him to perform direct magic on them to instantly kill the person. He initially uses his power for "good" by killing would-be criminals, but soon he becomes paranoid as everyone around him begins to fear him. Many people in his town start carrying weapons, not to protect against criminals, but against him. One night, he accidentally bumps into someone and kills them out of fear. Although he fled the scene with no witnesses, people suspect him for the murder, and he begins killing person after person, dozens after dozens, a gnawing frenzy of paranoia clawing at his mind, giving him no feeling of safety until his entire town is wiped out. With everyone dead, he eventually succumbs to sickness, and he too dies.

> Who the ♥♥♥♥ wrote these stories? Half of these would give a child nightmares, jesus.Let's try the First's text, they're more likely to have something useful. I mean it'll probably be mostly hymns and directions for praying to the sun or whatever, but better than "Everyone died, the end".

Thu Oct 13, 2016 4:50 am

CaveCricket48

Joined: Tue Jun 12, 2007 11:52 pmPosts: 9827Location: Here

Re: World Reader

TorrentHKU wrote:

> Who the ♥♥♥♥ wrote these stories? Half of these would give a child nightmares, jesus.Let's try the First's text, they're more likely to have something useful. I mean it'll probably be mostly hymns and directions for praying to the sun or whatever, but better than "Everyone died, the end".

The First's text should be better than some grim "child's" stories.

It starts out describing how at first there was nothing, and then the god Caelus forged the world and bestowed upon the land his seven gifts to the world, each a blessing and a curse.

Earth, Stability and StagnationWater, Unity and HordeWind, Freedom and NeglectFire, Courage and RecklessnessIce, Patience and SlothLightning, Law and OppressionLife, Intellect and Deceit

Several stories follow, the first seven being moral stories that represent one of the Gifts of Caelus.

A story after describes the creation of Infidi, the treacherous devil woman that wears a dark blue dress and carries a large great-sword like totem on her back. She travels the land, spreading the seven curses among people. She was originally a heretic that tried to secretly amass followers to destroy Caelus, but her followers ended up bringing attention to herself and she was eventually found and killed by Caelumites. She came back into the world as the devil Infidi, wielding Fire as her weapon, a symbol of her recklessness.

The last section of the texts are just ways to ward off Infidi and other demons (lots of praying and plastering the Caelum emblem everywhere), how to maintain your faith and help others find Caelus, etc.

> What a bunch of hokey manticore poop, right? We should be getting ready for that interview. Did the letter have a date on it to come by? Maybe they're waiting for a reply? How long would it take to get there?

Fri Oct 14, 2016 2:16 am

CaveCricket48

Joined: Tue Jun 12, 2007 11:52 pmPosts: 9827Location: Here

Re: World Reader

CrazyMLC wrote:

> What a bunch of hokey manticore poop, right? We should be getting ready for that interview. Did the letter have a date on it to come by? Maybe they're waiting for a reply? How long would it take to get there?

Let's see... They'll let you drop by any weekday between the hours of 5am to 7pm. It's preferred if you send a letter to specify an exact date, but they're fine if you just show up, including today.

You're in the town of Elmont, UC's office where they want to interview you is in Darson, a city that's a few dozen miles away. There's a train that runs to there (and another that heads from there to here) at 6am, 12pm, and 6pm. It's 8am now, so you could do the interview today if you wanted and be back for supper.

Maybe you could take your neighbor Iiri with you - that chirop across the street. She occasionally drops off books for you and occasionally food, and you write her history papers in return because you're kinda tight on money. You think Iiri wanted to go to Darson for some reason or another, might as well bring her along.

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